Red Bull junior Pierre Gasly stormed to pole position for Prema in the team’s first GP2 qualifying session ahead of Saturday’s opening race of the season in Barcelona.

In tricky, overcast conditions, Gasly led for much of the session and headed his nearest challenger, Racing Engineering’s Norman Nato, by close to half a second to secure his fourth pole in five GP2 rounds dating back to last season.

Frenchman Gasly was initially fastest ahead of the second set of qualifying runs and, though he was briefly toppled by Sergey Sirotkin and Alex Lynn, quickly re-established his advantage on his second run with a best lap of 1m27.807s.

With Nato securing an all-French front row, Lynn was forced to settle third ahead of DAMS team-mate Nicolas Latifi.

Lynn rarely looked comfortable – locking up at Turn 1 on his first attempt – and while he was briefly able to wrestle his car to the top of the standings, his effort was soon bettered first by Nato and then Gasly.

Sirotkin ended up fifth ahead of Gustav Malja, the Swede outpacing his experienced Rapax team-mate Arthur Pic by eight positions and seven tenths of a second.

Formula Renault 3.5 champion Oliver Rowland led the early stages of qualifying and wound up seventh, while Nobuharu Matsushita, Artem Markelov and GP3 graduate Luca Ghiotto completed the top 10.

Jordan King could only manage 13th despite team-mate Nato’s front-row efforts, although the Briton fared better than Mitch Evans, who was only 18th on his first qualifying outing with Campos.

RACE ONE GRID

Gasly storms to opening 2016 GP2 pole, Evans a lowly 18th